L’Equipe: Giroud set for new Arsenal deal

L’Equipe report this morning that Olivier Giroud has been offered a two-year contract extension that could keep him at Arsenal until 2018.

The French international hinted during the World Cup that talks were taking place with the club and that he was happy to stay on in London even though Arsene Wenger was seeking to acquire new attacking options.

Giroud has scored 39 goals in 98 games since moving from Montpellier in the summer of 2012 (a strike rate of one goal every 2.5 games) and provided 20 assists for his teammates.

It remains to be seen how the boss plans to utilise the 27-year-old in light of Alexis Sanchez’s arrival although it’s quite possible the HFB will continue to lead the line with the Chilean deployed out wide.

In other news Abou Diaby reaffirmed his belief that he has a role to play at Arsenal this season after overcoming yet another major injury.

The lanky midfielder made his comeback from a ruptured anterior cruciate ligament at the tail end of last season and hopes his pre-season preparations will stand him in good stead for the year ahead.

“My love of football is just so big that I couldn’t quit,” he told Sky Sports.

“I am still young and now that I have an oppportunity to play again I want to take it. I try to be positive all the time and that has helped me to come back.

“It is great just to be playing again. Now I just hope I can keep like this and continue. My knee is feeling good. I have been working hard on my fitness and strength.

“I am really confident I will be able to stay injury-free. I have worked hard for over a year.”

No less than a guy, who fights hard for the team in every match, deserves. The people who think he looked lazy and lethargic in some games tend to forget that this man had to play every single game up-front, alone and he did it with immense intensity all year. Fatigue is a real thing and it caught up with him eventually. He’s still technically very good, strong and a team-man. I’d be glad to have Olivier Giroud in my corner when we’re fighting for the title. His finishing needs improvement, most definitely, but there’s a world-class forward in there and we’ve all seen glimpses of it.

I don’t think anybody questions his commitment… The issue is just his finishing (got and missed more clearcut chances than any other player) … I used to believe he would improve but I’m just resigned to the fact that he’s just not that good in front of goal.. He does deserve an extension though bcos his work rate is great and that means he makes up in other aspects… But he definitely isn’t a talented striker.. He’s a reliable work horse..

Of the 117 players to score 10+ goals in Europe’s top 5 leagues last season, Balotelli had the worst conversion rate (9.2%).

Now I’m not saying Balotelli is bad or I wouldn’t have him, but when Arsenal fans are hating on Giroud and at the same time praying that Arsene signs Balotelli because Giroud misses too much, surely you see something wrong?

Note that 1% difference is around 1 goal per season and within 16/17% you will fit many, if not most of the fabled ‘world class’ strikers. (I’ve included Benzema at the WC because while watching I though he was fucking selfish and wasteful, hard to say whether the numbers confirm that.)

(The numbers include goals from set pieces, I don’t know how many free kicks/penalties respective players take. Numbers for league matches except Benzema and all via squawka)

I think why Arsenal fans question Giroud, is that he’s not the kind of striker to score a goal out of nothing. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen him score some incredible goals, especially for France, but his movement and technical ability isn’t quite up to the top players. Wenger confirmed this belief in signing Sanchez, a player who can dribble and create goals from nothing.

I love how Wenger has stuck by Diaby. Wenger knows his amazing potential to be one of the best DMs in the world when he’s fit. Don’t be surprised if he does a ‘Ramsey’ and returns to become the big boss of our midfield, finally filling that Vieira role and leading us to the title

Look we all know that not much strikers can get 20+ goals in year,but he play in team with ozil,ramsey,cazorla,rosicky and theo ,it key to get him score more…there is no need for balloteli or remy …he only need to learn how to finish well and everything will be great
sorry for my bad english

Awful player. Have you noticed how no other clubs were interested in him. Agents often leak interest even if it is not strong to drive a harder bargain. Most scouts don’t rate him. And why should they. Giroud’s hold up play is non existent. Look at the FA Cup final. Completely anonymous until Sanogo came on to try and hold the ball up. Poor first touch so can only receive the ball with his back to goal. Great for linking play but not a striker’s job. The consequence is driving Ozil deeper into holding midfield players. Thats if you ignore his lack of pace stopping any hope of a counter attack game.

I wonder if the reason no other clubs are trying to sign Giroud is because they know we only have (had now) 1 striker of note, thus the price Arsene would set would be ASTRONOMICALLY high…? Supply and pricing, it aint rocket science, go crawl back under your rock

Excellent News – At his worst Giroud occupies a defense at his best he is a goof finisher and will be an excelelnt foil for Sanchez or Walcott to spin off.

Diaby is a gamble – i think Khediera to arsenal hinges on his fitness – Diaby is better, more dynamic but brittle.
I would love him to stay fit for a season – i think if he had of stayed fit we would have much more silverware over the last 8 years – or he would have been picked up by city or barcelona for 30 odd million.
now though he’s likely to be ours for as long as we want…

Good, you can’t say that someone who has scored 16 and 20 goals in his first 2 seasons in the Prem is an awful player, though we all know he isn’t World Class. Having the striker in your team that scores all the goals and does everything week in, week out just brings the vultures in (think van *boilk* and Suarez. I much prefer sharing the goals around the team as we have done in the last 2 seasons than relying on one big player who is much more difficult to replace when injured.

In other news, I see BT Sport have released a follow-up ad to the Anfield game, which is more favourable to us with the 2-1 FA Cup win. Have a look, Chamberlains face when the first goal goes in is classic 🙂 BT Sport are still cunts though. Michael Owen *facepalm*

Does anyone know how much one has to put on someone signing for Arsenal that would make their odds change so much?? I just want to know how much people are currently wasting on backing Pogba to sign for us.

Slightly irrelevant, but last year there were a lot of bets being taken in Spain on Suarez joining Arsenal, at the time people laughed it off, but obviously later on it emerged that we were in for him.

Suarez’s agent is based in Spain (Pep Guardiola’s brother if I remember correctly), so it seems the people making those bets had inside information on Arsenal’s interest well before an official approach was made, presumably when Arsenal inquired about the infamous release clause that wasn’t a release clause.

So if you can find out where the bets originated from, and where Pogba’s agent is based, then it might be a realistic punt if they tally.

Or it could just be bookies trying to get a few mug punters to put some money on something that has no chance of happening.

This skinny pill ad is doin my head in. The fat people and the skinny people are two different people. Thats like fraudulent no? And contradicting themselves cos quite clearly no one is raving about losing weight with it, as it dont work.

Assuming this report is true, can I question this decision to extend our most controversial player without adding to the “agitated supporter in a transfer window” noise? Well, I’ll try.

He’s a striker that can’t finish. I think, after two years of receiving and wasting fairly good service, that we can say we know this by now. It’s also been shown that against high caliber opposition, he rarely, if ever, gets in position for proper chances to miss.

I appreciate that he has skills that are not finishing, but at the same time his passing highlights, which are spectacular, seem to overrate his overall ability to use the ball. For every gorgeous flick he plays, it sure feels like there are a lot of unforced errors, ill-advised dribbles, and poorly timed passes. This would not necessarily be such a bad thing for a striker who can finish, which, again, he cannot.

I have no problem with keeping him on until his contract ends and using him as a battering ram against parked buses. But to extend him, on the basis of what he’s given so far? No thanks.

Sure. Let’s start with his passing, which is the first thing people come to his defense with. This graph compares Giroud, the red shape, against Willfried Bony (blue shape) as well as other forwards–the middle ring of the graph is average for a forward, the inner and outer edges the 5% and 95% percentiles, respectively: https://twitter.com/mixedknuts/status/473816986653564928

Ignore Bony; Giroud only achieves the average benchmark in non-penalty goals. He gets some assists, not many, but on the whole, his ball retention is pretty terrible. (FYI, for more info on these graphs, which are excellent, check out statsbomb.com).

What this is saying is that if you correct Giroud’s attempts for quality (including pitch location and other factors), he’s basically atrocious; there’s a 95% chance that a league average striker would equal or better his (to date in Feb 14) 10 goals given the shots he took. This, by the way, was written to include his hot streak in Autumn 2013, and before his horrific performances in Late February through March 2014. So the metric may have gotten even worse.

Yeah, it’s tough being the ONLY striker on a team competing on multiple fronts, but he’s also the ONLY striker being fed by Ozil, Cazorla, Wilshere, Ramsey, Ox, Rocisky, Arteta, etc. So I don’t think conversion rates alone tell the entire story.

You’re totally right. 7th in the league in combined assists and goals. We should get rid of him.

ON the chart post, look at the bottom comment by author:

“it’s stylistic. Arsenal play a lot of balls up to him that require headers, flick-ons, etc. Target men have lower passes”.

So there you have it. The fancy chart did not sufficiently tell the story.

Perhaps if we interpret, (oh my, down the rabbit hole we go) with the aid of the chart author’s comment, we might agree the pressure he is under when receiving passes with back to goal might also relate to ball retention? 98% of the time (I made up that number) he’s got one ogre hanging off his back and another one kicking him when he receives the ball. In which case you might say he does pretty well.

The fancy chart tells me this:
1. that there is more than one category with which to monitor performance
2. numbers may be calculated but it still takes one of us boneheads to make up a story
3. that Bony would not be an improvement, according to this chart

Yeah, Giroud needs some shootin’ boots, we all know it. Maybe our new sponsor can help him out?

Of course, conversion rates alone will not tell you the whole story, as no stat/set of stats will. But that is true also about the stats you’ve posted, and, for example, I consider rvp to be one of the most clinical strikers out there, while the second graph makes him look pretty lame. In other words, factoring out the positions into which the player can get is not going to get you anywhere.

I love how everyone thinks I’m trying to say that he’s the worst player in existence and should be sold for a candy bar. I never said Bony would be an improvement, that Giroud is a poor overall player, or that he can’t be useful. In fact, anyone who bothered to scroll down a couple comments may have seen this from me:

“I like Giroud. I want him to stay for the two years he has on his deal. I also think the notion that what he’s done in his time here merits a pay raise and an extension that keeps him through ages 30 and 31, when almost every professional striker drops off, is a laughable one.”

And for instance, while writing the first reply I haven’t taken into account your post below because 1) I didn’t get below the post, and 2) I don’t read names of the posters.

I understand your point, but I’m tired of people saying Giroud is useless and some random bloke like benzema or mandzukic would improve us tremendously. No, most of them would improve us only barely, if at all, and most of them have so many against that they are not worth it in my opinion.

But I would love Aguero, all others top I’m either not totally convinced by them (mostly cavani and falcao), or carry too much baggage (ibra, suarez, rvp, rooney).

@zack, don’t get so self-righteous. Your original post was quite dismissive, if not insulting, of Giroud. You should therefore expect what you got and take it like an adult.

You launched it out looking for conflicting opinions. You got them. You made broadcast generalizing statements (‘two years of wasting fairly good service’). You got some back. I saw your later comment. It doesn’t erase the one that started this string of comments or the fact that ’empirical evidence’ needs context.

In short, if you’re going to slag a valuable player and call a potential extension of his contract ‘laughable’ you ought be ready to accept disagreement. Or you can be smug. It’s easy on the internet.

Oh, and for the record I never said you put Bony forward. I just said the ‘fancy chart’ tells me he’d be no improvement.

Fair play to giroud getting extension/payrise he works hard, maybe not the quickest but a vital part of the team and thrives on crosses not tippy tappy through the middle. Best of luck to diaby. #fuckyoudansmith

According to the laws of Quantum Mechanics, WENGA can be OUT & IN at the same time. So please STOP FIGHTINGJuly 29, 2014 at 2:58 pm

Ok, I will be that guy then.
I’m glad we are keeping Giroud, we will need him in the squad. But what we must not pretend is that he is an Arsenal-quality first choice striker. Not just because we had Henry and Van Persie, but just because he showed that he is a limited striker with one of the worst finishing stats in the Premier League.

The way some of these “fans” talk about players is baffling to me. Nobody is knocking on your door asking you to come and either play for them or manager their team. You know why? You know nothing about football, that’s why

Sigh, why is everyone forgetting how many times last year the majority of us were criticising him.

I’m sorry but his finishing is not good enough for a club of our size. He fails to impress against the big teams and has a very poor goal scoring record against them. That’s no coincidence, you don’t get many chances against the top teams but the ones you get, you’ve got to take. He’s not clinical.

I’m not saying he’s bad, he’s clearly a good striker, just not good enough for a club wanting to win the league.

He deserves it. People criticize him for not scoring enough goals which could be justified sometimes but he offers more than goals. His link up play is 2nd to none in Europe. The team is set up so that everyone can pop up and score. Now that we have Sanchez and Walcott who can torment any defense, we need our HFB to do his link up thing more than ever.
In other news, I can’t believe the blogger has not written anything about the OX going to court about the name “Chambo”. That to me is the best news of the day. #BloggerOut

Giroud is a great player to have in the squad. He’s not a 30+ goals a season type striker. People that hate him for that are irrational. You can be a good player to have on the team without scoring 30 goals a season.

Giroud cost 10 million pounds, and he’s produced 59 goals or assists in 90 games. He’s not only been excellent value for money; those are numbers that compare favorably with just about anyone out there not in the very top tier. Scoring or creating a goal in two out of every three games you play is excellent stuff.

The amount of hate he gets bears no reasonable relationship to his performance.

I completely agree that he gets an unfair amount of hate, but please realize that there are shades of grey between hating him and thinking it’s a good idea to reward him with a raise and extension.

There’s plenty of empirical evidence (which I have linked to, but the comment is still in moderation) that suggests that an average PL striker would perform at his level or better–not just in terms of goal scoring, but in all facets of his game. And the simple fact is that, when we have a team stocked with so much creative talent, we SHOULD expect our main striker to score in the high 20s. If he’s not “that type of striker”, then we need to find one who is (Sanchez?), or why would we spend £42m on Mesut Ozil?

I like Giroud. I want him to stay for the two years he has on his deal. I also think the notion that what he’s done in his time here merits a pay raise and an extension that keeps him through ages 30 and 31, when almost every professional striker drops off, is a laughable one.

Possible, especially in the region of 20-25m, certainly yes. I would even say it’s quite likely for dm, but I think it depends on whether Arsene sees Vermealen as a good enough cover for Per. (Playing with Per he is doing all right, what raises questions is his ability to play with Kos.) And don’t forget that next year there may be 4 midfielder positions left vacant by the possible departures of Mikel, Flamini, Rosicky, and Diaby (not sure whether all of them will be out of contract unless extended, but I think yes).

Giroud is not good enough to lead a title challenging/winning frontline, thats just the truth. Enough of this wankfest already…he is average @best and has cost us points alot of times. Its simple, to win the epl and challenge for ecl..we need a better striker.

I wonder what people will say when these two players actually come through this coming season. (???????). The truth about Diabi is that he will not give us 20 games this season. He just has to give us the games we got from Kim, and was less than 5. The interesting thing about this article is how different the expectations are surrounding them.

Another thing most supporters are guessing at right now, is how the team will play? Does anyone actually have an idea what our first team will look like during the first 5 outings? I personally have no clue, which makes this season so exciting.

It seems it either one extreme or the other with Giroud.
But, He’s not shit, nor is he great. He’s a very hard working technical forward for 60-70% of the games we play. He can’t score a goal out of nothing, but we do have Sanchez now, who can! Chin up, lads.

The 2 year extension is reassurance from the management that he still have a role in the club after Sanchez signing.

We play with 2 strikers, one through the middle and the other on the wings. With Sanchez and Campbell coming, in we suddenly have 5 options (Walcott, Giroud & Podolski) for 2 positions. Not sure what to do with Sanogo.

A dramatic turn around. Last time round we were just down to Giroud and Sanogo with Podolski and Walcott out for long stretches.

Look at the top 6 teams and tell me who giroud is better than. Some of u guys are so deluded to the extent u claim he’s better than costa, benzema, martinez heck i’ve heard someone on here say he’s better than suarez and sturridge. If we are a big club, we need someone better than giroud to lead our frontline. 39 in 98 games and people think he’s the best thing since sliced bread. From henry-adebayor(at least he scored 30 for us)-rvp-now giroud…we’re regressing rather than improving on that front. You guys need to honest with urselves and look pass this “hfb” crap or whatever…giroud is average; he wouldn’t get into loserpool, manure, shitty, chelshit, heck even swansea or maybe spuds first 11(adebayor on his day is far better than him, only a fool would say otherwise).

There are these little details called ‘tactics’ and ‘team formation’ you seem to be overlooking. Arsenal is decidedly different than all of that lot in these regards. And I’m not quite sure where you’re getting this claim that folks are saying he’s better than Benzema, Suarez, etc.

“Adebayor on his day”. Heh. Happens about twice a season these days it seems. While I appreciate his occasional contributions, You never knew when he would decide he cared enough to show up. And he’s a prat. Thankfully the club are getting rid of all of the shit attitudes.

We would all love to see a “world-beater” -whatever the fuck that means- join the squad. But I don’t see the point in a personal vendetta against our top scorer who was second in assists only to Ozil and ground out 36 matches without injury absence.

@mpls i’ve seen it on hear alot times…people claiming how higuain and benzema are overrated and not an upgrade over giroud and how giroud is better than costa despite the fact they each scored more than he did. We have a better midfield than napoli and maybe atleti…so how is giroud so “unfortuate”?? Say what u want about adebawhore, he might have been a cunt, but at least he scored goals(30 in a season) and was/is far more mobile than giroud.